The AOS Technical Building

The entrance of the ALMA Array Operations Site (AOS) technical building, located at an altitude of 5000 metres above sea level, on the Chajnantor plateau, in the Chilean Andes. This building hosts the ALMA Correlator, a powerful computer which will combine the signals from the ALMA antennas, making them work together as the most powerful submillimetre-wavelength radio telescope in the world. The observations are controlled from the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF), located at the much more comfortable altitude of 2900 metres, on the road to Chajnantor.